


meet me on the equinox

by centralperks



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: "why we broke up", F/M, Fluff and Angst, Success and Failure, soul searching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2020-11-28 03:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20960060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/centralperks/pseuds/centralperks
Summary: "I could breathe easier away from everyone else, easiest when it was just Scott and I. It was all I knew. It was what I had been trained to know."----Tessa, and life post-Olympics. In two parts.





	1. Chapter 1

The one unbreakable rule of couples dancing is that the partners must move interdependently, as a unit.  
Gerald Jonas  
\-------

There used to be a girl at the rink we trained at in Michigan who made Scott’s skin crawl. 

His fingers would twitch whenever she came near, and he would become subdued – polite, but curt, his gestures toned down to slight head nods and miniature smiles. 

I remember her well. She was always dressed in white; sweaters, headbands, gloves. Maybe because she thought it matched her figure skates, which were always perfectly polished and gleaming. She could have used her blades as a mirror to fix her lip gloss if she wanted to, but it seemed her lip gloss never needed fixing. It was always layered perfectly across her wide smile, a faint watermelon scent lingering around her like a cloud. 

Her hair was a bouncy, buttery blonde, her smile was perky and ever-present. I have no idea why Scott hated her so much – she was the most positive, cheerful person I had ever met. Even at 6:30 in the morning, she seemed to be alive and awake, as though she had never slept. Like any elite athlete, she was competitive, but never in a mean way – she made sure to go out of her way to congratulate anyone who came above her, in a way that almost made you feel guilty for coming ahead of her. She never skated with a partner, and Scott used to say it was because no man could have put up with her. I quietly disagreed. 

I regarded her from a distance for years. My fascination was not quite admiration, although it was something akin to it. Part of me wanted to know if her disposition was natural or a carefully constructed mask that allowed her to move through the intense world of elite figure skating with ease, but I never stood close enough to her to find out. 

I was also grateful to her. The mornings when she would stand next to Scott and warmup, stretching out in her leggings, or giggling at his jokes were the mornings where he would seek me out faster than he usually did.

“Thank God you’re my partner,” he’d say, catching up to me while I was doing laps, “seriously, Tess.” He’d nuzzle his nose in my hair and I’d let out a little smile, clutching his arm to me. 

I was never jealous of her. Sometimes I even pitied her. 

It was true I didn’t have Katie’s easy smile –I was more serious, more reserved. Sometimes it surprised me that Scott wasn’t more naturally inclined towards Katie. His nature resembled more hers than mine, but whatever the case, our practices flowed more smoothly on the days that Scott was aware and grateful that I was his partner. Of course, the same could be said for me. 

Katie switched rinks when we were approaching adulthood, and I lost touch with her. She would creep into my thoughts at the strangest moments, like when we were on the ice at our 2010 Olympic warm up. I hadn’t seen anything of her in a few years, and the thought of her was so random it made me let out a small laugh. 

“Are you okay?” Scott asked, looking down at me with a furrowed brow. I shook my head, nothing, and held his hand a little tighter, Katie drawing me closer to my partner once again. 

I looked her up periodically over the years, stalking her Instagram feed. She married a doctor and had three children in a sprawling house in the suburbs. All her pictures featured her big smile; I could smell her watermelon lip gloss through the screen. 

I still wasn’t jealous of her, and sometimes I still pitied her. Her house with its perfect white brick and small children, as though she had taken a class on how to live life with all boxes checked and come out with an A plus. The funny thing was that I had a feeling that if I ran into her, she would be the one to pity me. I could picture her polite smile and happy congratulations. I could picture her walking away with her family in strollers clutching apple juice, leaving me behind with five Olympic medals that would now feel heavy in my hands and heart, thinking she had got the better end of the deal, chosen the better path. I prayed I would never run into her. 

I wondered if she was happy. I hoped she was. 

\---------

“Here, Tess,” my mother says to me, handing me a lemon cake, “set this on the table, would you?” 

I take the cake from my mother’s hands. It has been set for a feast – in a half hour, my mother’s side of the family will be coming for a Sunday dinner. I’ve stayed the weekend with her. Out of all my siblings, I see my mother the least. Staying the weekend occasionally eases the guilt. 

“So,” my mother starts, spooning potatoes carefully into a dish, “have you talked to Scott yet?” She says this so casually for a moment I think we’re talking about the weather, not my skating partner. 

I sneakily try to lick a fingertip of icing off the cake as well as ignore her question. “Kind of.”

“Well, have you congratulated him?”

Finger now cleaned, I roll my eyes. “No.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” my mother responds, flicking her hair back away from her shoulder, case closed. I narrow my eyes. My mother invented the art of subtlety, or passive aggressiveness as my brother calls it, but I don’t want subtle. I want bricks of honesty. 

“What does that mean?”

My mother sighs. “Tessa, were you ever really going to be the one who married him?”

No, I think, not in your mind I wasn’t. My blood runs hot underneath my skin. Her comment makes me want to pick up my cell and phone him, the hint of rebellious teen still half awake in me, always, when it comes to my mother. 

I wait until the last dish is scrubbed and my family has retreated to the living room for cake and coffee before sneaking upstairs to the guest bedroom and fishing my phone out of my bag. Waiting for Scott to pick up, I pick at a loose thread on the bedspread. The dial tone seems to ring forever, and I prepare myself to leave a voicemail. 

“Hello?”

“Scott?”

“Hey, Tess.”

Beat. 

I flop back on my bed, eyes raised to the popcorn ceiling. “I just called to wish you congratulations,” I say in a rush, wanting the words out before they stick to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter. 

Another beat. “Thanks. I really was going to call you tomorrow, I swear, but things got so busy here and I –”

“I get it,” I cut him off before he can continue, “trust me, it’s fine.” And I do get it. In truth, Scott and I are not best friends, not in the typical sleepovers and paint-your-nails-way. There are many reasons for this. 

Beat.

“I’m sorry.”

I sigh. His voice sounds distant on the phone, like he’s a million countries away. My nose burns. “Don’t be,” I say.

There’s silence again, and I take a moment to listen to his breath before the room begins to feel suffocating. “I need to go,” I say, “but I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah,” he says, remotely, and I hang up before I can say anything more. 

Leaving my phone on the bed, I slip on my white shoes and creep out the back door, needing air, needing to move. My nose is still burning, and I rub at it until it turns red. 

I walk aimlessly for awhile, feeling the jumping anger in my blood. I walk to curb it, but it just burns hotter the longer I walk, until I’m no longer sure who I’m even angry with more – at Scott, at his fiancée, at myself. At figure skating, at my own decisions, at fate. I laugh, bitterly, at the thought of fate – I’ve never believed in it. 

I never imagined this day would come. Scott will have a wife, I think to myself. I shiver at the thought, slightly nauseous. Girlfriends, I can deal with – girlfriends are giggly, fun, and require little effort to keep them happy – at least the ones Scott has been with. Skating partners rank higher than girlfriends. I can, purposefully - and I know this - intimidate the girlfriends. It’s a power I use seldom, but has been known to make an appearance. 

A wife is different. The word tastes different in my mouth than girlfriend. It reminds me of bread, baked fresh within someone’s home. It’s a personal thing, this breadmaking business, to create the substance of life with your own hands and live from it. A wife is a permanent fixture, a touchstone, a guardian. A wife is a commitment, a covenant. I wave a white flag in the face of a wife. 

I feel hot tears on my cheeks, but I make no move to dry them. I feel like my head is underwater and I’m gasping for air, but another wave is knocking me down. I don’t know how to stay afloat without something to hold onto. 

\-------  
November 2012

I woke to buttery yellow sunlight streaming through the curtains. Rolling over, I checked the clock on the bedside table, 8:12am, before turning back. Early enough to stay in bed five more minutes. 

I could hear Scott’s voice coming from the kitchen, joking with Patrick. We had a wedding to attend, and Patrick and I had stayed the night. I rubbed my eyes, relishing in makeup free eyes, before creeping into the bathroom to brush my teeth and fix my hair. 

“Tess, though? She’s doing okay?” That was Chiddy. I was on my way into the kitchen but stopped in the narrow hallway, hiding myself behind the corner, ears pricked.

“Yeah, I mean, she’s fine, I think – why?” I could hear him pulling mugs down from the cabinets, pouring coffee. I ran my fingers along the cream coloured walls, holding my breath. 

“Is she still seeing that guy? The skier?” 

I twisted my mouth. Please Scott. Please, for once in your life, shut up. 

“I don’t think so. I’m not really sure. We don’t talk too much about that stuff, you know? Here, add some of this vanilla stuff to your coffee. Tess loves it, and it’s actually the shit.”

I breathed a small sigh of relief through my nose, and fixed a smile on my face before stepping into the kitchen to greet them with a good morning. 

“You’re awake,” Scott said as a way of greeting, handing me a mug.

I rubbed his arm, clutching my mug to me while I opened the fridge with my other hand. It was a typical bachelor spread – a bottle of ketchup, a six pack, a jar of pickles, and three apples. I took out an apple and went to sit at the table with my breakfast of champions. 

“So I was thinking,” I said, as I took a bite, “that after the wedding tonight we could go for milkshakes at the 24 hour diner we like? By the library?” 

“Yeah, that sounds great,” replied Patrick enthusiastically, “I love that.”

“What were you saying about going for milkshakes afterwards,” Scott snorted in my ear later that evening. I was at the bar, ordering champagne, my eyes scanning for Patrick. 

“Why, is he wasted?” I stood up on my toes to see if I could spot him, but he was nowhere in sight. 

“He’s pretty gone, yeah,” Scott replied, leading me back to our table. The wedding was beautiful, soft lighting and flowery, but I wasn’t paying much attention. I was mostly thinking about getting back on the ice in a few days, dreaming of music and skating. 

“Tessa.”

“Hm?” I cut my eyes back to Scott, who was looking at me with a grin. His hair was done neatly, his black tie perfectly knotted. I could smell his cologne. Usually he smelled like the feeling of a cold ice rink. I wriggled my nose, unused to the scent. 

“I said, come dance with me.” He removed the champagne from my hands, but I managed one more sip before he was leading me out to a floor of what looked to be a dance floor winding down. A few scattered couples were turning lazy circles, relaxed and calm. I waited for Scott to pull me in, as I always did, waited for his familiar firm grip to mold me into position. 

We were silent for a few turns, but communicating, always, as he brushed his fingers up my spine and I responded by pressing my thumb into his shoulder. 

“Thank you for not saying anything to Chiddy this morning,” I said with real words as we turned and Sara Bareilles crooned through the speakers. 

Scott shrugged.“I have all your secrets, Tess. Everyone else has mine.” 

I smiled a little, unsure of what to say. “You do.”

We didn’t talk about how we were each others secrets, secrets we didn’t even mention in the dark under the covers. There were too many people involved so heavily in the fabric of our lives – mothers, coaches, people with microphones and questions. 

It was best to keep secrets. 

“Milkshakes?” I said to Scott after the song ended. He dipped me gently and pulled me back in with all of the grace of a man who had been ballroom dancing the majority of his life before responding, “what about Chiddy?”

I cricked my brow. “Let’s let Jeff take him home.”

“As long as you’re paying,” Scott said, looping an arm around me, “I’m okay with anything.” 

“Vanilla, then,” I grinned, grasping for his hand as we gathered our coats and prepared to head out. The night air was cool on my skin. It was refreshing to step away from a room full of muggy air crammed with people. 

“Anything but,” was Scott’s predictable response. 

I swirled my straw inside my milkshake, thinking about choices and what mine had to show for my life, thinking if only there was a way to make sure that I was doing okay, that I was passing whatever proverbial tests life had given me. I was missing skating – missing measuring myself on podiums and platforms. I glanced over at Scott, wondering if he was feeling the same. 

\-------  
February 2018

The room was predictably packed, decorated in red and white. An athlete had cliched another gold for Canada – I wasn’t sure whom. My head was a little swimmy, but in a way that made me more sentimental than party-on-a-table. 

Pushing through crowds, I snagged a Molson off a table, cracking it with a hiss. 

“Hey, Tess.” I turned to my right, where Scott’s mother appeared. I greeted her with a smile, wrapping an arm around her. “You’re still awake!” I laughed, rubbing my nose. 

“Yeah,” I replied, “although I was thinking of leaving soon.” 

“Scott was lookin’ for you, actually. Did he find you? Wanted to introduce you to somebody.” 

I sipped my beer, shaking my head. “No, how long ago?”

“About twenty minutes.”

I snorted. “Well, if he shows up I’ll meet whoever he wants. You know how he is – making friends with everyone.” 

His mother grinned. “Don’t I ever. Did your mother tell you about dinner tomorrow?”

Before I could respond, a plaid-covered arm wrapped its way around my neck, folding my body into his. His breath was sticky with beer in my ear, and I brought up my free hand to clutch him to me. 

“Yeah, she did,” I responded, focusing on Alma again. 

“Yeah who did?” Scott asked. I tried to twist myself in his arms to see how drunk he was, but his grip was firm. His words weren’t slurred, so I assumed mostly sober. 

“We’re talking about dinner tomorrow, with both of our families. To celebrate.” 

It would be the first year Scott wasn’t bringing a girl to our post-Olympic dinner. The thought passed through my mind fleetingly, but I didn’t linger on it. 

“Can we go to the restaurant? That Chiddy recommended? He said the bulgogi was amazing.” Scott finished his thought with a sip of my beer, which he returned promptly to my hand. 

“As long as they have bibimbap, I don’t care,” I replied, taking my own sip.

“I think we should meet at around six, what do you guys think? Downstairs by the vending machine?” Alma asked. She pulled out her phone, scrolling through. “Let me text the others and see if that works.” Scott shrugged, pulling me with him. “And for god’s sake, Scotty, let go of Tess, you’re going to suffocate her.”

“I don’t mind, Alma,” I smiled. 

“You two aren’t sick of each other?”

“Not yet,” Scott grinned, a running joke with our family that had been going on for years. “Come on, Tess, there’s someone I want you to meet.” I shared an eyeroll with Alma before letting myself be led through the crowd, promising myself I’d leave by one am.

\--------  
March 2018

The minute I stepped through the doors to my room, the world seemed to expand in size, and I could breathe easier. The Californian sky was littered with stars, and I felt the white wine I had been sipping make my cheeks warmer than they should be in the cold. 

I sat in solitude on the deck outside the room – my bones were heavy and my lids were threatening to close, but I didn’t feel like sleeping just yet. 

I was alone for twenty glorious minutes – no press, no questions, no partying, no people – when the door behind me opened. 

“Tired?”

“No,” I replied, “I just needed some air.”

There was silence as he came and sat next to me. I willed him silently not to talk – I had no energy. It was spent, strewn out on the ice where I had left it a few weeks ago, along with my heart and the last of my life’s work. I was standing on a precipice. 

“You’re predictable,” is what Scott said, and my lips curved in a half smile. He was cutting an apple, slicing it neatly with his knife the way only men know how to do. There was a bowl of them on my dresser, along with oranges and bananas, but I hadn’t touched one yet. 

“Only to you,” I replied, thinking how true and untrue this statement really was. Scott smiled a small smile, lip curling up on one edge, before offering me a slice of fruit. 

It was cut perfectly, red skin shining. Scott’s deft fingers worked around the rest of the apple, and I watched as I took my slice. It was curved and sweet against my tongue. Scott took one for himself and offered me another, and I took it silently. 

Where are we, what have we just done, where will we go next were all of the questions resting on my tongue. I was desperate for answers and found none. The sky was grand in front of me, the apple in Scott’s hand growing smaller. 

“Tess,” said Scott, swallowing, “you gotta stop thinking for a sec.”

I shut my eyes for a moment, and let my head find the crook inside his shoulder, the place where it was safe, and warm. Suddenly I was nine years old again, too shy to speak to the rest of the world, afraid of shadows in corners, but comforted by the flesh and bone of Scott underneath my cheek. I buried my nose inside his collarbone, a move I knew would tickle him and make him say “Te-ess,” in whine. 

“I’m afraid,” I whispered, my voice as thin as I’d ever heard it. My fifth Olympic gold medal, freshly acquired, and I was admitting to the stars that what I felt was fear. 

“You don’t like being alone,” was Scott’s simple response, and I felt tears prick the inside of my eyes. I was rarely weepy, but the late night mixed with the emotional high of the last few weeks was getting to me. 

I shook my head. “I hate it.” 

“I know.” 

“But I need to do it.”

“Tess – ” Scott started, but I didn’t let him finish. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Just let me sit here. Stay here with me.”

I could breathe easier away from everyone else, easiest when it was just Scott and I. It was all I knew. It was what I had been trained to know.

\-----  
April 2018

“Tess, would you just – would you just slow down,” Jordan panted from behind me. I was grabbing broccoli, whipping them into my plastic bag.

“Hm?” I turned to my sister, her brow furrowed. “Jord, what’s wrong?”

“You’re moving at one hundred miles a minute. I feel like we haven’t even spoken today.” 

I stuck the vegetables in my basket. “Oh,” I said, chewing my bottom lip, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

Jordan sighed, hooking her arm through mine. “We’re going to walk to the chocolate section now – slowly,” she joked, leading me through. “And you’re going to talk to me.”

I shrugged. “I don’t have anything to say.”

“You leave tomorrow – for what country again?”

“Asia.” I picked up a block of mint chocolate. “I like mint chocolate now, right?”

Jordan rolled her eyes. “Yeah, T.” 

I stuck it in my basket. “Shame I wasted all those years hating on it.” 

“Tess, would you just – seriously. How are you? Really?”

I blew a piece of hair out of my face, exasperated. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Fine. I’m fine. I won a gold medal. I won two gold medals. The world is my oyster. I have every available opportunity at my feet.” I think Scott might be real grown-up in love with me and not teenage infatuation, is what I said in my head but not with my mouth. Some things were better left unsaid. 

“Then why do you look so .. mopey, these days?”

“Hey! I am not mopey!” I said. I almost stomped my foot for good measure, but restrained myself. 

My whole life had been one long question of what-do-yo- want-Tessa and me being confidently able to answer – an Olympic gold medal. I had one. The question was still relevant. The answer was ambiguous. The world was too big. 

“I’m getting two bars,” I said, mostly to myself, plucking the chocolate off the shelf. 

A few nights later, and I was tucked into my hotel bed, fluffy white duvet smothering me just the way I liked it. Scott’s phone beeped from the night table, and I swiped to answer it, but he made it there before I did, spitting toothpaste in the sink before answering. 

“Hey,” he said, “how’s it goin’?”

I gestured with my eyebrows, inquiring as to the caller. My head was thick with choreo and emails, appointments and people to respond to, but my eyes were open and I knew I wouldn’t sleep great. 

Scott flicked his hand, dismissing my question, and I curled my lip at him, poking out my tongue before burrowing further in my pillow. 

“She’s just not sleeping very well, that’s all,” I heard Scott say. I peeked my head out from my pillow, watching him, my curiousity as to whom he was speaking with growing. The stars were bright tonight, and I craved a day to see the city. I was, however, to be on the ice by 8am tomorrow morning. My whole life, one blurred ice rink into another. My medal was won. My world was shrinking around me. I was suffocating, and I couldn’t even use sleep as an escape. 

The pressure I felt was indescribable – unlike the pressure of an Olympic medal, the only way I could measure my success was now through time. I had become obsessed with thinking of myself at forty. The next decade would hold no medal, the last two of them had held more than fifty. I was grasping at straws, mourning the loss of my identity. Under my sparkly costumes and figure skates, I was left exposed. 

Figure skating was my job. I clung to this assurance with military focus. My leggings were my uniform, my competitors were my coworkers. I had exercised restraint in growing too close to a community that I had helped shape, and yet the loss was threatening to overwhelm me. 

But staying in it, immersing myself in the world of skating was not an option for me. I wanted to make my own way, forge my own path. I wanted to experience what life had for me outside of an arena, and coworkers I had worked with for more than a decade. 

Scott was still chattering away and I was growing more annoyed. I turned to him and stuck out my bottom lip, an old trick that I hardly used because my mother called babyish, but as the baby of four, it never failed to work on all three of my siblings. Or Scott. He hung up, tossed the phone on the table beside him before lying down on top of the covers next to me. 

“It was Jordan,” he said, “she was worried about you.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not six. I’m almost thirty fucking years old. She doesn’t need to baby me, and neither do you.”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth I regretted them. I watched their bitter sting hit Scott, and he lowered his lashes. “You’re tired.”

His observation, and his calm response made me feel even guiltier, and it took all of me not to burst into tears. He had been kind, unfailingly so, for longer than I had deserved. I knew he would say the same for me, but I wouldn't have believed him - not these days at least. He was steady. I was afraid. He was the anchor, and yet I was desperately curious as to what blue waves would hold for me. A tear escaped, and I sniffled into my hand, feeling like I was six, even if I was almost thirty. 

“Ah, Tess,” Scott said, brushing hair off of my face, “don’t cry.”

I didn’t have any words to say. I turned my head to kiss his palm. “I’ll stay here,” Scott said, “just try to sleep.” 

I closed my eyes, amidst the gentle hum of the TV, the blue light low, and Scott beside me, just as I had known for as long as I could remember. He was my safety net, and I was terrified to jump without him, but I was equally terrified to stay within the walls of my own comfort. 

Torn between everything I was and everything I wanted to be, I let my head rest in Scott’s lap.


	2. Chapter 2

"Dance is the hidden language of the soul."  
Martha Graham

\--------  
April 2018  
On the bare cream walls of my grade 3 classroom, there was a colourful poster with an old William Shakespeare quote. “All the world’s a stage,” it said, in bright yellow letters. I used to chew my pencil and stare at those words, not knowing how true those words would really become for my life. 

By the time I was twenty five years old, my world was a stage, and I was a star performer. I was a young girl in love, in a fluttery blue dress. I was a seductress, dripping in red. I was the epitome of purity, carrying on a legacy of love from a woman who had experienced very real tragedy with a man she had been very much in love with. 

Part of me understood, from early on, that if I wanted to make these stories believable, they had to come from some place within me that was true. From wells inside myself I would find treasures; aspects of each identity, pieces of each dancer where these things were my reality – and then I magnified them, exploited them, twisted them to blow up to be larger than life. I was, as I said, an excellent performer. 

The trouble with performing, with drawing from emotion that does come from deep within you, is that you don’t always see what’s real and what’s not real. When the stage was pulled away, sometimes I didn’t know how to stop pretending. 

‘Come here,’ Scott’s text said, ‘room 202. I’m rooming alone.’

‘Be there in five. Tired. Wearing pink sheep pyjamas.’

‘Lol. Don’t care.’

I slipped out of my own hotel bed, shivering from the chill in the room. I grabbed my keycard, not bothering to check my hair as I slipped out the door. That was the nice thing, I mused, about having the same boy around since you were seven. He really didn’t care about messy hair or spinach-in-teeth. Or pink sheep pyjamas.

Our high of winning another gold medal had not yet seen a crash – we were still riding the waves of the euphoric moment of watching our dream become a reality. I was bracing myself for the crash, and yet every part of me wanted to savour every last second where we were completely at our best, as we were whenever we accomplished something great together. I was walking a tightrope, too afraid to look down. 

Scott’s lights were off when I slid his spare keycard in the door. A sliver of moonlight streamed in from between the blinds, illuminating his features just slightly. He was on his side, facing the door. His eyes were closed, cheek pressed to the pillow. I tiptoed quietly across the carpet, lifting the covers and sliding underneath them with all of the intimacy afforded to two people who have known the same bed for many years. 

“Hi,” he whispered, eyes still closed. I laid my hand under my cheek, observing the curve of his jaw, the fine hair of his eyelashes. 

“Hi.” My voice was quiet as I regarded him. He was a touchstone in my life, a constant. Through arenas and airports, breakfasts and competitions, gym workouts and lifts, he was an extension of my reality. And yet, in some moments, I was still struck by his presence, that he was the very same person I had been too shy to speak to when I was a little girl. 

“Did you eat?” I asked, remembering my own solo ham, apple and cheddar sandwich at a café down the street. 

These murmured whispers underneath covers; these were my favourite. These were my measures of reality, of what was tangible. Scott was loud, generally, I was confident, usually. But here, under moonlight, behind closed doors, stripped of sequins, we were each our own, belonging simultaneously to ourselves and to each other.

“Yes.” 

He fell silent again, which wasn’t unusual – between the two of us, I was the night owl. The shadow of night protected my innermost thoughts turned confessions, I always believed. Daylight seemed to expose. I lay on my side, my eyelids drooping shut, near sleep as well, which was a welcome change after a string of restless nights. 

“Tess,” he said, making me open my eyes a little, “I love you.”

I breathed a sigh through my nose, lips curved. “I know,” I said. “Me too.” 

Under darkness is where I wanted to stay, in covers and away from the world. The world was a noisy place, begging for my attention in every corner. I was splitting myself in one thousand different pieces, trying to make everyone comfortable and happy, while simultaneously desperate to break free of so much of the last twenty years of my life. I craved change – I needed to see who I would become. 

I look for myself, I thought as I stared at Scott, and I find you instead. 

I was terrified to resent him. 

“What are we doing?” 

That was Scott, his eyes peeking open. I brushed a strand of hair off his forehead, relishing in the quiet. 

“Lying here,” I whispered. I didn’t want to talk, not about this. Because if we talk, I thought, we are going to turn into versions of ourselves that I am not ready to face. Because if we talk, we are going to mention things like long term, and children, and money, jobs and homes. Because if we talk, I don’t know if you’re going to like what I have to say. 

I could tell Scott wanted to go on, but I willed him not to. There were things, I thought, better left unsaid. 

Maya Angelou’s caged bird sings. Mine pokes and prods the lock. 

\-------  
“What time do you need me there?” I ask, cell phone on speaker as I spread peanut butter onto whole grain toast. Old habits die hard. “I’m free as a bird all day.” 

My friend Elizabeth’s tinny voice comes through the speaker, “can we say about an hour? I’m so sorry to do this to you, Tess.” 

I wave her away with by hand even though I know she can’t see. “Don’t worry about it,” I respond, crunching into my peanut butter toast. “I’m happy to watch Toby. We’ll have a fun day.” 

I wrap myself in my floral scarf, fixing a loose curl of hair in the mirror while slipping on my shoes. I consider myself in the mirror – same green eyes, same nose since I was twenty, same dark hair. I lift a lock, wondering if I should dye it lighter – I tilt my head to contemplate a blonder colour. I dismiss the thought – my hair is ruined enough from years of dye. 

As I drive to Elizabeth’s I think about what to do with Toby all day. Maybe a movie – although I realize I’m not quite sure if a four year old could sit through a whole movie. 

“Thanks, Tess,” Elizabeth says, leaning in to give me a collarbone hug when she opens the door. Her daughter, Zoe, is fixed on her hip, red and droopy eyed. I rest an index finger on her baby fat cheek, making a cooing sound. “The appointment shouldn’t be too long. I just want to make sure she doesn’t have an ear infection, and then I need to stop by my sister’s to drop something off. I shouldn’t be more than two hours, three tops.”

“Elizabeth,” I say, unwinding my scarf.

“Tess,” she responds, half a smile on her lips. 

“Relax. I’m an Olympic medallist. I can handle a four year old.” 

Elizabeth laughs. I don’t pull out the Olympic medallist card often, because I think it can be tacky, but she laughs every time I do. I kiss Zoe’s head. “Where is Toby?”

“Playroom. I was just about to fix him a snack. He should be okay in there for another half an hour. If he gets bored, feel free to take him to the park up the street. Oh, and there’s a stack of books next to his bed.” She finishes her speech as she slips her shoes on, grabbing her purse and rummaging for her keys, all while holding Zoe steady on her hip. As always, I marvel at the impressiveness of mothers. 

“Got it,” I say, holding the door open for her. “We’ll be here when you get back.” I blow them a kiss as they walk down the front steps, shutting and locking the door behind me. 

Elizabeth’s house is comfortable. A kitchen with white cabinets and a grey backsplash, mail littering the countertops. A blanket has fallen off the comfy couch on to the rug in the living room, the picture on the wall is crooked. It looks lived in. It looks like a home. 

I head upstairs in the playroom to check on Toby, who’s playing quietly in the corner with Lego. “Mommy left?” He asks, when I enter. I expect him to be like my brother’s kids – loud, emotional. But Toby is unnaturally even-keeled for a child. 

“Do you want a snack?” I ask, holding out my hand. He nods, drop his Legos, and follows me to the kitchen where I lay pieces of cheese on top of crackers for the both of us. 

“Can we go the park, Aunt Tessa?” Toby swings his legs in his chair, mouth full of food. I smile, brushing a crumb off his cheek. “Sure we can, buddy. Finish first, and then we’ll go get your jacket.” 

The wind whips at our hair as we walk, clutching hands. Toby skips a little as he walks. “Aunt Tessa, what do you do for your job?” 

I swing his arm a little. “Where did that question come from, little dude?”

“At school we were learning about grown ups and jobs. And we learned that when you’re a grown up, you have a job. Mommy’s job is teacher. Daddy’s job is office. I’m going to watch dogs. You’re a grown up. What’s your job?” 

I grin. “You remember last year? When you came to the cold arena and I skated in my red dress? That’s my job.” 

“That’s your job?”

“Ye -,” I say, remembering. “Well. It was. I’m kind of between jobs now. Being a grown up can be kind of complicated.” I swallow the lump in my throat, but Toby doesn’t seem to notice. 

“Cool. I like your job. Plus you get to do your job with a friend. I think that’s nice.” 

“Yeah,” I say, worrying on my bottom lip. “it was.” 

Toby makes a break for the swings, and I hang back on the wooden beam surrounding the park, balancing my toes on the edge of it, remembering when I would balance more precariously on more dangerous surfaces, wondering when everything would stop reminding me of skating. 

A woman pushes her stroller into the park, letting go of the hand of her toddler. She is dressed in a green army jacket, small diamond studs glinting in her ears as she chatters into a cell phone. I observe her quietly – she looks to be my age. What my life would have looked like had Scott not shown up, or maybe what it could have looked like if I had not left. 

Toby and I amble home slowly, his warm hand again tucked in mine. Children seem so mundane in the wake of gold medals. Snacks, schedules, over-exhaustion, wine by eight, bed by ten. My heart shudders at the thought of minivans, of co-ordinating dinner schedules with a partner. 

I close the door shut, and Toby asks if he can watch a movie. I happily comply, and we find comfort on the couch, with an old Disney movie I’m not even sure I know the name of playing in the background.

I think, as I often do, of what Scott wanted, and what I didn’t want. If, given the choice, I would not let my feet touch the ground for the next decade. I crave airplanes, new places, inconsistency. Elizabeth’s life, routine and carefully planned out, makes my stomach turn and I feel childish for admitting so. What is wrong with me that I am discontent with the monotony of every day life? Perhaps it’s because I never had it as a child. 

I walk around on both legs, two holding me up, but my whole life I’ve been walking with four. To lose, to sacrifice, is not something I’m familiar with, and I feel the loss of Scott like that of a limb. 

\--------  
We tour one last time, and my bones feel like jello. I mold back into the person I know to be when I skate, and then I fade away once my skates come off. 

I sniffle into a tissue halfway during our stops, and Patrick confuses it for tears. I wave him off. I’m not crying, although I feel like I should be. 

Most days I just feel numb.

\------  
I climb aboard the tour bus, hoping and praying it will be empty. Scott is sitting on the couch, scrolling through something on his laptop. I clear my throat and head into the mini fridge for a water. Our steps have been careful, except for when we’re on the ice. Mostly I try to avoid him, and I know he does the same for me. We’re trying to spare each other, I think. Or at least trying for some semblance of adult maturity. 

“Where is everyone?” I ask, unscrewing the lid. 

“Out for dinner,” he responds, his eyes leaving the laptop to fix on me. They’re relaxed, I realize, unguarded. I haven’t seen them so open in awhile. It takes everything in me not to cry. 

Carefully, I take a step towards where my bunk is, but stop in front of him on my way. “You did good tonight,” I say softly with a small smile. He tilts his head up to look at me, and gives me a grin in return. 

“We had fun, didn’t we?” 

His eyes never leave mine and for a moment I am reminded of every bit of life we’ve shared and I wonder how I’m going to reconcile all those pieces when I am left with them and nothing else. I wonder who we’ll be to each other in ten years. I know what he is to me in the moment, but it doesn’t feel like enough anymore. 

Slowly, I reach out a hand and place it on the top of his head. He closes his eyes at my touch, and puts a hand on my waist, guiding me closer until my knees bend and I’m sat sideways on his lap, legs tented. My head falls against his shoulder. His chest rises and falls underneath me. 

There’s a last for everything, I think, melodramatically. I wonder if it’s better to know it’s the last, or let it creep up on you in realization years later. With my breath slowing to match his, I decide it’s better not to know. 

\--------  
May 2019  
“What happened to you two?” My sister asked me, one warm day in May. 

“It was everything at once,” I replied, not knowing I believed me answer, but it was the one I had settled on. “He was ready, I wasn’t. I was ashamed, thinking if we got together I would be failing. It was me fighting inevitably. Him wanting stability. Me craving inconsistency. It was children, and lack of.” 

Truthfully, it wasn’t one reason, but a million of them. I didn’t know if I could love him for the rest of my life, as much as he did me. And my feet wanted to be far away from ice rinks. Scott’s were never leaving blades. I didn’t know how to say goodbye to figure skating without saying goodbye to him, too. 

\----------  
June 2018  
“You don’t know what you want, T, that’s your problem,” Scott said, words zooming at me like an arrow. “You’ve never been less sure of yourself in your life.” 

I winced at his words, knowing them to be true but refusing to acknowledge that he had struck a chord within me. As usual, I curled into myself, not saying a word. Which, as it usually did, only made Scott grow angrier. 

“I’m telling you what I want, because we can’t live like this forever. I can’t live like this forever.” 

“It’s always about what you want!” I exclaimed, louder than before. We were standing on opposite ends of my kitchen island. I resented him for breaking the peace that I had cultivated within my home, for flinging words across the room that I didn’t want to hear. 

Scott’s mouth set in a firm line. “It’s about what we need to decide going forward.” 

“For you. To go forward.”

“You know what your problem is? You’re only looking out for yourself. And you’re going to wake up to find this whole house is just a structure of rotting wood.”

I simmered, looking away from him and biting on a nail. I no longer had any empathy for our situation, and no part of me wanted to continue this conversation. The sting of his words were felt tangibly in my chest. 

“You’ve never cared about anything more than you’ve cared about your own needs,” I said, low and measured. “Not even me, no matter how much you say otherwise.”

Scott buried his face inside his hands, wiping his palms over his cheeks. “Forget it, I’m done.” 

“No!” I yelled, my voice growing louder, “you can’t just leave because you feel like it!” 

He turned and opened the front door. “Maybe we didn’t love each other enough.” And with those last words, he slammed the door and was gone. 

I sank down to the ground in the middle of my kitchen, hand pressed to my mouth to try to stop the escaping muffles of my sobs. It felt like a knife had gone through my stomach and had been pulled free, twisted, and I was left to bleed out. Scott and I had never said such cruel words to each other before; our fights were usually silences marked by unspoken truces to make up. 

I had an unsettling feeling that I wouldn’t see him for awhile, and I laid my cheek against the cool wood of my floor, letting my tears fall. Everything within me had collapsed at the sight of him leaving, and I was petrified to move. My phone buzzed, and I ignored it after confirming that it wasn’t him. 

The next few days and weeks were agony. I felt the acute loss of him more than I had ever experienced. Many times a day did I question my decision, did I contemplate phoning him, did I consider that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I had no way of knowing, no guiding gut feeling, as I wished that I would feel. I wondered if his breaking away was inevitable, if we had been hurtling towards a finish line since the first day we began skating together, but I didn’t think I would ever know the answer. 

I jumped on airplanes as much as I could, running from a life that I didn’t want and trying to create a life out of the mangled pieces it had become. I was left to contemplate my place in every corner of the Earth, left to my own devices to figure out what I truly wanted. On one such plane ride, I realized the safety net had gone, and I hadn’t stepped within the realm of skating in months. 

I opened my package of peanuts, headphones plugged in and sky blue at 35,000 feet, feeling more free and more lonely than I ever had in my life. 

\-----

I enter into a string of new relationships, some documented and others more private. I keep myself busy, or busy enough. My conversation with Scott that day on the phone, on congratulating him on his engagement, seems a lifetime away, and when I look at the calendar I realize that it’s been more than a year since. He has been married for a number of months now, and still the old habit to call him burns my phone at strange hours and strange times of the day. 

It’s like this. Sometimes, I am so well-adjusted to my new normal that I forget that I ever used to live and breathe on skates. I forget that I was a dancer, a performer and an actress on a stage, let alone one who had a partner. And other times, I feel the pain of that loss of identity so much it feels like I can’t move. When that happens, nothing stops me from remembering that I had a partner whom I loved very much. 

Hindsight is a gift and a curse. It has given me this – that I know now, that I did love him. I know that he did love me. And I know that we made the choice to let it go. Whether or not it was because it wasn’t enough, or because we didn’t think it was worth the risk I am still unsure. 

But I have to believe we loved each other, because otherwise the pain of letting go doesn’t make any sense at all. 

Small things will cause me to remember things I thought I had previously forgotten. A book I had read in middle school, dog eared and yellowed, found deep inside a drawer of clothing I wear around the house. Scribbled inside, a note from Scott, Tess pay attention to me I’m trying to talk to you. 

A day outside when the wind feels just the right temperature of a skating rink, passing a shop that sells ballet shoes. Booking a plane ticket to somewhere we never went, and somewhere we always said we would go together. 

None of these memories would feel painful if we had not loved each other, or so I choose to believe. It’s either that, or that I miss who I was when I was living these memories, and I can’t confront the idea that the person who lived these memories is gone. 

I slip my shoes off and move deeper into Elizabeth’s home, placing my present for Toby on the kitchen table and greeting people as I walk through the house. Elizabeth is standing near the counter, balancing her daughter on her hip, as always, and I go to kiss her in greeting. 

“Hey, Tess,” she smiles at me, her butter blonde hair styled to perfection. “Toby will be so glad to see you.” 

“Where is he?” 

“Out back, I think,” Liz replies, setting her daughter down. “Come back when you find him, I want to talk to you about the kitchen reno.” 

I set off for the backyard, thinking about the house crammed with people and overcome by such a fresh wave of sadness that I have to pinch the piece of webbed skin between my thumb and pointer finger to keep from crying. I remember that day, babysitting Toby when he was four years old, and now attending his sixth birthday party. I no longer see the house as a cage but a refuge. My own house has felt empty for some time, and I put it on the market a few months ago. 

“Hey Aunt Tessa,” Toby grins shyly up at me, giving me a hug. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

“Me too, pal,” I say back to him, hauling him into my arms. 

\---------

My hands shake as I insert my other diamond earring into my piercing. I remember the day I got my ears pierced. I thought I would look so much older, and so much cooler, like my older sister, and I desperately wanted earrings to match my skating costumes. 

I clasp the earring back, the same ones I wore when I won my first Olympic medal, and smooth the silk of my dress. It is the first event that I will have attended with Scott in years. I haven’t seen him in over year, maybe more. My memory is playing tricks on me lately, blurring the past. 

My hotel is right across the street from the venue, and I take a deep breath at the thought of seeing him again. I bundle into my coat and think inexplicably of Toby, and of his 6th birthday party a few months ago. 

The lights are dim, and the flower arrangements are pretty, and the room is grand. I slip into the persona I have known for a long time, thanking so-and-so, and congratulating they-and-them. We are being honoured for something-or-other, a swim of accolades and achievements I find I care less about as I get older. 

I am talking to a man in a suit who is the partner of someone-of-something when I feel him enter the room, and feel his eyes on mine. I will myself not to turn around, but I last five, maybe ten seconds before I do. 

He is standing near my table, hand on my jacket that is draped over my chair, as he kisses his wife goodbye as she heads out in search of something – a drink, maybe, I’m not sure. His eyes meet mine, and I excuse myself from my conversation. 

What I wish he would say is, “I have never loved anyone as much as I loved you, and you have never looked more beautiful than you do right in this moment.” Or, “we made the biggest mistake of our lives.” Or, “I have a plane ticket. Let’s leave right now.”

What he actually says as I approach is, “hello.” And once again, as it has since I was seven, my heart leaps from my chest and attaches itself to his as I say nothing in response and instead wrap my arms around him. 

We spend the whole night together, laughing like old friends, which is what we are, I suppose. At some point in the night, we meet outside the hallway, each coming out of the restroom. 

“You look beautiful,” he says, “but you always do.” 

You look like everything I left behind, I want to say, and I’ll never know if I made a mistake. Right now I feel like I made a huge one. 

“Thank you,” I say instead, linking his hand in mine and relishing in the event that is being thrown in our honour, just the two of us, just how I remember. It feels like pieces are being clicked back into place. 

“I don’t think I will ever come to place in my life where I won’t love you,” I say to him as we slowly make our way back to the room full of people. I say it quietly, so lowly that no one around us can hear, through my teeth as we had spent so many years perfecting. 

Scott stops me then, and I grow afraid that my honesty was too honest and not right for this moment. But he raises a hand to my cheek, and looks at me with all the intensity of the past however-many-years, and I want to cry. Slowly, as if he’s falling asleep, he presses his forehead to mine, in a gesture so reminiscent of the past. 

“Me neither,” he says, finally, quietly. It’s enough for me. I rest an index finger on his chest, and he lifts it to his lips, a butterfly kiss before we go back into the hall, shedding our truest selves for the contrived versions the public has always revered. 

You are my sweetest gift, I whisper as we make our way back. And maybe we made the right choices, or maybe we made all the wrong ones. I will never know. I don’t know if I want to know. 

But this is my life, and this his life. And maybe one day our choices will lead us back together again. 

Until then, I squeeze his hand three times, and release it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Always love your thoughts. xx

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :) Thoughts are always welcomed.


End file.
